BABY STEPS indeed: Barney Cheng's GLBT embarrassment opens on VOD and digital

It has been a long while since TrustMovies has encountered a film, the heart and mind of which is trying so hard to be in the "right place," even as every step it takes becomes utterly cringe-inducing. Manipulative, manufactured, and messy as all get-out, BABY STEPS is about the "making" of a much-wanted (for apparently all the wrong reasons) baby desired by only one-half of a gay couple. As written, directed and starring a fellow named Barney Cheng, the movie takes the term "vanity production" to new heights (or in this case, lows).

Mr. Cheng, shown above, below and at left (it was very difficult to find a publicity still that did not include him), plays Danny, a Taiwanese man who's gay but sort of halfway closeted (his mom knows but they don't talk about this). Mom is played by an actress, Grace Guei, below, said to be the "Asian Meryl Streep." Not to worry, Meryl; you'll find little competition here, at least as provided by this particularly graceless Cheng/Guei combo. Not only does every scene clunk tiresomely along, each successive one seems less believable.

The comedy is mostly obvious and mirthless (unless you are an absolute newcomer to films), and the drama seems overwrought and often plain silly. Every cliche known to man (and movies) is dragged out here, as we get the fertility clinic scene, the search for a surrogate, the hot gay twosome, the nasty and overbearing mother, the overweight black best friend, and, oh, so much more.

We were ready to cry uncle a half-hour in, but the reviewing obligation overrode all else, so we stuck it out, through one thudding misfire after another. Even when something that initially seems more unusual occurs (such as the sudden ban on surrogates in Taiwan and then India), the manner in which these are handled appears almost nonsensical at times. Character reversals, too, cloud the movie's credibility -- first, by the lover who does not want the baby, and finally that of bad mom herself.

There is actually one single bright spot in the film, coming via the performance of an actress named Love Fang in the role of Mickey, the caretaker of the nasty mom. Ms Fang is so real and dear, so genuine and troubled by what her character is asked to do, that suddenly but all too briefly, she lends the film a much-needed dose of truth. (Of course, I could not find a single photo of her among all the many publicity stills from the movie, almost all of which feature Mr. Cheng.)

Content- and theme-wise, Baby Steps has just about everything it needs to be a crowd-pleasing GLBT hit. And yet the way in which Cheng mashes it all together proves so ham-fisted that just about nothing here works as well as it should or, in other hands, very well could.

On the shelf for two years, the movie is at last getting a release -- via Gravitas Ventures -- on VOD & digital, beginning this Tuesday, August 15.

Petar Valchanov & Kristina Grozeva are back--with another dark & winning com-dram, GLORY

Remember The Lesson, that black, bleak Bulgarian film that opened just over two years ago? Memorable and more, that movie prodded me to conclude that we would be seeing more from its fine filmmakers, Kristina Grozeva and Petar Valchanov, and sure enough, here they are again, with an even better film, GLORY. The movie begins with the setting of the time on a wrist watch, and the watch ends the film, too, while becoming what is clearly the most important inanimate object in this very lively movie.

The two filmmakers, shown at left, with Mr. Valchanov on the right, have only grown in the two-year interim, now handing us a tale that once again shows their home country to be a place of enormous, endemic corruption, hypocrisy and ugliness, probably not at all far -- simply smaller -- from what the USA, under our current regime, will soon become. Our "hero," Tzanko, played with remarkable skill and a genuineness that scorches by Stefan Denolyubov (below) is a quiet, surprisingly honest -- given the state of Bulgaria -- railroad worker with a speech impediment. As with many movie characters who carry such a burden, this fellow, too, is sad, moving and sometimes difficult to watch as he struggles mightily to make himself understood.

When Tzanko, one day during his rounds checking and tightening the railroad tracks, comes upon a open and spilling-out sackful of money, he turns it in to the police. Due to a just-breaking scandal and a nosy TV reporter, the Transport Minister and his PR staff immediately set about making Tzanko into the public "hero" he would rather not be, and in the process starting a set of actions/reactions that become hugely destructive.

If this sounds like the basis of a great black comedy, it is. But calling this film Capra-esque, as some have done, seems to me a misnomer. Frank Capra would utterly blanch at the horrific outcome here, deserved as it might be. Capra had a great sense of irony and an appreciation of the bleak and black, but this is, well, something else. 

Fortunately the two filmmakers have rounded up another great cast, led by two of the actors who also appeared in The Lesson: Mr. Denolyubov and the leading lady, Margita Gosheva (above), who, once again does an incredible job of placing us in the mind, body and emotions of a "public servant" so wrapped up in her own needs and desires that she, like the boss above her and the underlings below her, have lost way too much of their humanity.

And yet we do identify with this woman, Julia, who, with her significant other, is trying to conceive a child and just wants, don't we all?, to live the good life. To this end, what she does, blithely and finally shockingly, paves the way to endless grief for our hero -- his poor pet rabbits are but the tip of the iceberg -- and finally to something she so completely deserves for which she will never understand the reason behind, so wrapped up in herself and her world is this poor woman.

Once again, the no-longer-Communist countries of Eastern Europe -- from Poland, Romania and Bulgaria all the way to Russia itself -- are held up to the greatest ridicule by their own filmmakers. No doubt deservedly, too, with this ironically titled movie taking its place as one of the best yet.

Another auspicious debut from Film Movement, Glory gets its U.S. theatrical premiere this coming Wednesday, April 12, at Film Forum in New York City, and will open here in South Florida at the Tower Theater, Miami, on May 15. To view all currently scheduled playdates, cities and theaters, simply click here and scroll down.

One-half of a German lesbian couple pines for a baby in Anne Zohra Berrached's TWO MOTHERS

If only both partners were as eager to have that child mentioned in the headline above, things might have gone differently than they do for the smart and likeable pair of women we meet in TWO MOTHERS (Zwei Mütter), the intelligent, fragmented, but deeply-felt German movie from Anne Zohra Berrached (shown below). Using a documentary style to view her protagonists and their somewhat circumscribed world, Ms Berrached, as director and writer (with some help from Michael Glasauer's script consulting), has come up with a very involving look at a lesbian relationship in the process of growing and perhaps foundering, as one of the two young women finds herself more and more drawn to the idea of having a baby. By any means possible.

Though the film takes place in Germany, a country most of us probably consider relatively progressive (nowhere near the Scandinavian level, however), it seems that -- when it comes to providing lesbian couples state-supported help, financial and/or otherwise -- this country has some learning left to do. The kind of obstacles the couple encounters are surprising -- for one thing fertility clinics that do not, under German law, offer treatment to non-heterosexuals -- and they impact everything from these women's well-being to their pocketbooks.

After exhausting all other avenues, the pair decides to try a sperm donor -- but one who will not insist on being both donor and father. This takes the film into yet further realms of surprise and even a little humor. While the women are played by two fine actresses -- Karina Plachetka (at left, above and below) and Sabine Wolf (at right, above and below) -- the other performers, at least according to what we find on the IMDB, appear to be playing themselves as doctors, donors, and people on the subway and/or street. This certainly adds to the verité quality of the film.

The dialog here seems particularly on the mark -- genuine without ever being "writerly" or overly sophisticated. As much as the movie documents the trials and the time these take before something actually happens, the filmmaker keeps the focus on our two women. This works well because they are at the heart of the drama, and it is their relationship we're rooting for -- at least until it becomes more and more clear that one woman wants what the other does not.

Along the way we meet a number of interesting people who figure into the tale, and as months and more months pass, tension builds and alternatives seems to disappear, while insemination after insemination goes by with nothing to show for them, other than reduced finances. There's a lovely little scene in which Ms Wolf meets, but briefly, an adorable little boy in the library, and we imagine that she may be changing her mind about chil-dren. Finally there's a fellow named Flo who applies as the possible donor, and things take a turn for better or worse, depending on your perspective.

The risks to a relationship when a surrogate is used is shown here to quite believable effect, and while the movie stops short of any actual closure, it is pretty clear where it -- and the relationship -- is headed. Two Mothers, from TLA Releasing under the Canteen Outlaws banner and running a very brief 75 minutes, hit the streets on DVD this past January 13.